


Oops All Kids We Stole From The Dark

by Agent_Scribe



Series: What If... [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: M/M, The Dark, They're dads now, and themes of helplessness/manipulation, ep 173 fix-it, fuck idk how tags work, some angst mixed in with the kids fluff, they're gay, warning for suicidal ideation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:28:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24923887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Agent_Scribe/pseuds/Agent_Scribe
Summary: episode 173 except Martin decides they're going to steal some kids and Jon gives in to his hopefulness because he's deeply in love with him, and now they have all these kids.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Series: What If... [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1806064
Comments: 16
Kudos: 146





	1. Okay, Let's Steal Them

It is dark as night on Night Street; probably a statement that should go without saying. The streetlights are there, Jon can see them - even this darkness can’t stop the Seeing - but not a single one glows. No light peeks from behind the curtains of the houses that line the street; there’s no stars, no moon...not even the light of the Eyes, here. Only noises. You’d think by now screaming wouldn’t bother him. After so much of it, everywhere, you’d think he’d be immune. He’d thought he was. These screams...these screams were different. Shriller. Smaller. Children. They were children.  _ Don’t know why I’m dancing around that. They’re children, you Know - you’ve  _ Known _ what this is, what it would be. _

Martin is talking. What is he saying? 

“I really miss the days when I could blame broken streetlights on the council. A strongly worded letter just doesn’t feel as forceful when it’s addressed to ‘whichever Dread Power it may concern.’”

Should probably respond… “Mm.”

Is Martin saying his name? Maybe. There’s so much here there’s so much...there’s so many of them...all trapped all scared all wondering where - where - 

“Jon, are you all right?”

“I - I’m fine”

“Nope! Try again.”

He tries to pull back, tries not to See it all for a moment, make words come out of his mouth. “Look, I would really like to get through here as quickly as possible.”

Martin is babbling. Jon could know what he’s saying, he could pay more attention, it’s technically possible for him to hear Martin while Seeing he does it all the time but - but here - it’s - “Martin  _ please. _ ” It’s so much and all Jon wants to do is speed-walk down Night Street and forget, somehow forget this place exists. Martin asks where they are, and Jon explains, tries to not Explain, only tell it as indirectly and gently as possible. Gentleness in this world feels like a luxury; he tries to give it to Martin as often as possible. It’s hard, with all the hard edges he’s grown. He tries…

“We have to help them,” Martin says. It’s so matter-of-fact, so Martin. So  _ hopeful _ . How is Martin still  _ hopeful? _ Jon knows the answer to that question; he Knows too much and Martin doesn’t have any of that weighing him down, squashing out every ounce of hope. 

“ _ How? _ ” Jon says. It’s so heavy everything is so heavy...with all his power he is still  _ so powerless _ \- flashes of hooks and strings and a seductive voice, a whiff of cigarette smoke… Martin is still talking. 

“There has to be something we can do!” Martin says as another perso - another  _ child _ screams. Martin pauses, then asks, a little quieter, “What’s happening to them?”

“Do you really want to know that?  _ Really? _ ” 

Martin does. Martin asks about the Avatar. Jon Knows exactly who that is, Knows that the Avatar here is also a child...mostly. As child, as human as an Avatar can be. Martin isn’t convinced that Callum is still a child, so Jon does what he needs to to show Martin why he can’t, won’t kill Callum. It wouldn’t help anyway; Jon Knows that and Martin should know that as well, by now. 

They walk away from Callum’s house, and Jon thinks maybe Martin has given it up, has seen there’s nothing to be done, it’s all hopeless - no, Martin is  _ still talking _ . 

“I want you to help them; I want you to make things better!” Jon knows this isn’t just about the children, though for now, it is. 

“There is no _ better _ anymore.” There isn’t, there can’t be. It’s impossible, this is the world now...forever. Without end. Jon wants to lay down forever, forget everything, wipe his mind as blank as this Dark. 

“You keep - saying that, and I  _ hate it! _ ” Martin says. 

“I keep saying that because it keeps being  **true** ; you  _ know  _ that!”

“What I  _ know, _ is that leaving children here is - is - it’s inexcusable; it’s  _ monstrous! _ ” Oh. Jon feels his eyes sting. He wants to say  _ that is what I have become Martin, haven’t you noticed _ or  _ don’t you think I know that but there’s nothing I can do, I cannot change what I have done _ or  _ I would give anything for none of this to be true _ but he doesn’t say any of that, he doesn’t say anything real. Instead he says “ _ Martin _ . Tell me what you want me to do, and I will do it!” What he also does not say is  _ Martin, give me some of your hope, give me a plan, give me anything that will help me escape this trap of guilt and helpless monstrosity.  _ But Martin looks into his eyes and sees it. 

He sees it anyway, Jon doesn’t know how. And Martin reaches out and puts a hand against Jon’s cheek and says, “Oh Jon,” with the weight of a million sorrows. 

And Jon sighs and rests his cheek against Martin’s hands and says “I’m sorry Martin.” 

They stand like that for a long moment, a precious moment of gentleness in the midst of hell. Jon closes his eyes, replacing the fearful Dark with a trusting darkness. He takes one deep breath, then another. He’s so tired. 

Martin slides his other hand into Jon’s, takes a deep breath, and says, steely determination in his voice, “We steal them.  _ We steal them all _ ,” and Jon laughs, actually laughs because it’s so ridiculous it can’t possibly work but… He opens his eyes and sees Martin there, sees Martin seeing him, sees Martin’s hope and determination, and for a moment, just a breath, he stops Seeing only pain and suffering and inescapable fear. 

“Okay,” he says. “Okay, lets steal them.”

  
  
\--  
  


There are too many kids here to actually save them all. Martin doesn’t know whether all the kids in the entire world are here or if it’s only the kids from England or the UK or some other arbitrary area. He could ask Jon to Know, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t want to put a number on the children here, because it will almost certainly be too high for him to feel like they are making any actual difference. Any life saved from this fear, any child rescued is a difference _ , Martin _ , he chides himself.  _ It’s more than nothing. It’s more than helplessness. _ He looks over at Jon, at his eye-haloed boyfriend, and feels his heart thrum with happiness. Jon looks...purposeful, like he does when he’s extinguishing the Avatars. It’s less frightening like this, less monstrous. “So, where do we start?” Martin asks, squeezing Jon’s hand in his.

“Right here,” Jon says, pulling his hand away. Martin starts to reach for it again, but Jon is crouching slightly and reaching his arms out and a second later a child is in them, panting, wheezing out small screams, struggling in Jon’s arms. “Shhh, shhh,” Jon says, holding the child just enough to stop him from running off. As he speaks his eyes start to glow and Martin instinctively stiffens - but the glow is soft and warm and lights up the Dark just slightly. The child stills, still panting, no longer shrieking. “Look around, there’s nothing here, only us,” Jon says. His hands are gently rubbing the boy’s back now. Martin melts watching Jon comfort him, watching how gentle Jon is. 

He moves a little closer, in the soft warm glow. “Just us,” he says, softly. “My name is Martin, and this is Jon.” He puts a hand on Jon’s shoulder as he speaks. “What’s your name?”

The boy goes limp against Jon’s chest, still struggling for breath, though now he sounds like he’s sobbing instead of shrieking. “J - J - Jack.”

“Hello Jack,” Jon says, his voice as warm as his light. “We’re going to take you away from here, okay? We’re going to get you out, away from the monsters.”

“You - you can do that?”

“Yes,” Martin says. “Yes he can.”

Jon stands up slowly, keeping a hand on Jack. “We’re going to get others out, too. I’m going to let go of you now, so I can look for them. Why don’t you take Martin’s hand, yeah? You’ll be safe as long as you’re holding on to him.”

“O - Okay,” Jack says, taking slow shaky breaths. He reaches out and Martin takes his hand. 

“You’re safe now,” Martin tells him. “Jon...well Jon’s kind of in charge.”

“I - I thought that was uh - Callum?”

“He only thinks he’s in charge,” Jon says. “He’s not.”

They move through the neighborhood, Jack’s clinging to Martin’s hand, jumping at every sound and shadow. Martin tries his best to radiate calm and confidence, and as he watches Jon, it gets less and less difficult. Martin had never thought to use the word “angelic” for Jon, but with his eyes glowing, bathing him and his surroundings with soft light, he looks...well...something like an angel. He walks into houses and comes out carrying, or holding the hands of children who are sobbing. Martin bends down to introduce himself, ask their names, and usher them to their place in line. “Hold tight to each other’s hands,” he tells them. “You’re safe, but don’t let go.” The children grip each other so hard their knuckles turn white, and not one of them complains. 

The train grows - Jack, Olivia, Candice, Miller, Marjorie, Pamela, Henric, Calvin, Rosie, Diana, Nevil, Forest - Martin starts losing track after the first dozen. “Have to get you all nametags!” he says as he makes sure the 50th child has found their place in the line. Both his hands are occupied now, and Jon has started walking the children to the end of the line. 

“We’re almost out,” Jon tells Martin after child 55. “The Dark isn’t happy, and it’s cutting our trip short. We cant’ save many more without risking the ones we’ve saved.” His eye-halo is brilliant, Martin almost can’t look at him. Martin wonders if, perhaps, the Dark is afraid. 

“I’ve been worried I’m going to lose someone for a while already,” he says. “Better we leave while we can.”

Jon nods, and without looking with his human eyes, catches another child in full run. “You’re safe now,” he tells the child, looking down at them. Martin notices the halo is still watching him. 

In the end, they save 63 children. It seems both a ridiculous number and far too few, but Jon had barely managed to find the 63rd child. Any longer and they’d have risked losing everyone. They’re out of the Dark, back in a no-man’s-land. The Eyes look down on them, never blinking, a disturbing substitute for the sun and stars and moon. A few of the youngest children start crying; the older ones look rather unphased. Now that they’re out of the Dark, they split the children up into groups of 10, each with at least one child over ten to keep track of everyone. Jon is holding a child in each arm, two of the smallest who couldn’t stop crying. “Now, something very important,” he says, standing in the middle of six rapt groups of children, “is to find a fun name for your group. It can be anything!”

“Anything  _ polite _ ,” Martin interjects from the back, shifting Rosalie to his other hip.

“Yes, of course, anything  _ polite _ , you may not name your group Group Poop.” A few of the children giggle, and Jon mock-glares at them. Martin smiles slightly, watching him. He’s so good with them, so gentle and so not the Jon he had become through all of this - sharp, difficult, falling back into fear and paranoia, consumed by guilt. “Now, I’m going to sit down here, and you can all yell out your group name when you’ve decided, okay?”

There’s a chorus of quiet “okay”s from the kids. 

“I caaaan’t heeaaar yoooouuu,” Jon says, raising his voice.

“Okay!” More kids this time, still quiet.

“Louder!!” Jon says, smiling broadly. “Loud as you can!”

“OKAY!!” the kids scream back, and Jon beams. He catches Martin’s eye across the sea of children and beams at him as well, before looking down at the small child on his left hip and murmuring something to them. He looks...beautiful. Martin has never been so full of love.

  
  



	2. Okay, Let's Talk About Our Feelings

Under the watchful eyes of Jon, Martin, and the entire sky, the 63 rescued children start talking amongst themselves about the names for their groups and, as they do, they begin to relax, slightly. As they talk they loosen. After ten minutes Jon has heard the first child laugh. Soon, many of the groups have devolved into yelling over one another with suggestions and disagreement. The children on his hips have started to calm, though he has been careful to keep distracting them from the sky. He can’t help glancing across the ocean of children to Martin every few minutes; almost every time he does, Martin is looking at him, looking...radiant. The times Martin isn’t looking at him, Martin is looking at a child and the  _ gentleness _ , the  _ love _ that Jon sees, for children Martin met only an hour or so ago - it melts him. He’d never thought of them having children - how could he, they’d begun sort-of-dating at the beginning of the end, so there had never been thought of a future - but now...now he feels a pang.  _ One more grief to bear. One more never-to-be to weigh on me _ . 

After 30 minutes have passed, Jon stands up from where he’d been sitting with the little ones and starts clapping his hands.  _ Clap. Clap. Clapclapclap. _ He repeats the pattern, catching Martin’s eye and giving him a “join in” look. After a few repetitions a few of the kids notice, and then the clapping spreads through them like a wave. Once he has all of them clapping along he calls out “copy me!” and changes up the pattern a few times. Assured he has everyone’s attention, he stops, and says “So! Has everyone decided on names?” There’s a mixed chorus of “yes”s and “noooo”s. “Show of hands, who has!” About half the groups raise hands. “All right, the rest of you have the next little bit to decide, then,” Jon says, and starts pointing to groups. 

The six groups have named themselves The Hawks, Spacepeople (“Calvin suggested Spacemen but I pointed out there are  _ women _ in this group  _ thank you very much _ ” says 8 year old Vivian with  _ great feeling _ and Jon nods and says “very good point”), The Mighty Ten, The Cats, Dolphins Ten, and Fuckery. The last one Martin points out is  _ not _ polite, and the children reluctantly relent to the suggestion of “heckery.” After this is settled, Jon pulls from the deep recesses of his summer camp memories and starts leading everyone in camp songs. This goes surprisingly well. Jon is almost too busy to notice Martin, leaned back on both his hands, beaming at him. Almost. 

After the last rendition of Baby Shark, the children are tired. The new normal of not needing sleep doesn’t quite seem to apply to them, and yawns have spread through the whole group. They curl up on the hard ground, as close to one another as they can get, and as close to Jon and Martin as they can get. The two of them end up surrounded by a circle of children. Jon wishes he could do something about their inevitable nightmares but once again...helpless. He sighs, and twists his hands in his lap. So many children. Somehow he has become jointly responsible for 63 individual children. 

He starts when something touches his hand - oh, just Martin. “Jon-my-love,” Martin murmurs. “What’s on your mind?”

“Sixty-three children, Martin.  _ Sixty-three _ .” 

“Yes, you’ve counted about a hundred times.” Martin runs his thumb over Jon’s knuckles.

Jon sighs. “I - I - Martin I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“I don’t think there’s any manuals for navigating the apocalypse, unless you count novels.”

“I most certainly do not,” Jon scoffs, and Martin chuckles. Jon looks up sharply, catches Martin’s smirk. “You said that just to get a rise out of me.”

“Maybe.” There’s a smile in Martin’s voice, too. He squeezes Jon’s hand. “We did a good thing. A human thing.”

Jon looks down again.  _ Human _ . Even thinking the word causes a lump in his throat. “I only - Martin I only did it because of you. I wouldn’t even have stopped if you hadn’t - I -”

“I know,” Martin says. His hand moves to cup Jon’s chin and ever so gently pulls Jon’s gaze to him. “You don’t have to be a monster.”

Jon makes a sound; it’s choked and small and it wants to be a sob. “You believe in me far too much, Martin.” He doesn’t pull his face from Martin’s grasp, but he can’t look him in the eyes either. 

“Someone has to.” Martin’s thumb is stroking his cheek now.  _ Why did I take so long to love him?  _ Jon thinks.  _ Why did I have to start loving him right at the beginning of the end? Why didn’t I love him before now, when I’m sure to lose him? _

“I don’t want to be...any of this. I don’t want  _ any  _ of this.” His throat hurts and his eyes sting. It’s all so heavy. It’s all so wrong. “This whole time, this whole time since Gertrude died and I became Head Archivist I’ve been...I’ve been looking away. Trying not to know; not to Know. And once I did I - I told myself I had no choices; told myself I was trapped; told myself I was helpless. I - I don’t know...if that was ever true.”

Martin hums softly, an “I’m listening” noise, and continues stroking Jon’s cheek.

“Martin...what if - what if I just didn’t - didn’t fight hard enough? What if I could have stopped this? All of it?” Jon is shaking now, losing the mask he’s worn for so long. He sees threads, threads wrapped around his wrists, his ankles, his torso, going in all directions, tying him to every Fear. “I could have killed myself,” he whispers. “That would have stopped it.”

Martin breathes in sharply, his hand stilling against Jon’s cheek. “Jon… Jon no. I don’t think - I don’t think that would have stopped it. Jonah would have found someone else. He would have done to them exactly what he did to you. He had every step figured out.”

“But it wouldn’t have been me. Maybe the next person would have been stronger. Or - or smarter.” Wouldn’t have let themself be used, manipulated, set on a path by another person. Wouldn’t have been so goddamn oblivious. Maybe they’d have been able to avoid... _ this _ . “I ignored so much, Martin. And I excused so much more. I let myself become a monster. And I’m still not sure how much choice I even had. I don’t know if I’m lying to myself, to assuage my guilt, when I say I didn’t have a choice. I can’t tell any more.”

Martin pulls Jon’s head to his shoulder, moves to stroke his hair. “I’m glad you didn’t kill yourself, Jon-my-love. Maybe it’s selfish, but I’m glad you’re here and I’m not alone. I don’t know all the answers to your questions, but I do know Jonah used you. He used you to start this. At the very least, you had no choice in that.” He speaks so gently, so reassuringly. Jon closes his human eyes and lets tears slip out of them onto Martin’s collar.

“I’m so tired,” he whispers.

“I know,” Martin says. 

And they sit like that, Jon’s face hidden in Martin’s collar, Martin’s hands running over his hair, until the children begin to stir and wake. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This ended up being about 50% Gay Dads and 50% Angst but it's TMA so it really shouldn't be surprising.


End file.
